ACADEMIA

Presence will enable company to better serve growing markets; seeking business development manager to handle regional accounts: CEI, a leader in simulation software for engineering and science, has established an office in Houston, and is seeking a business development manager to head up its regional sales and support operations. CEI sees the new office as an opportunity to expand its business in industries that have a growing need for software used to analyze, visualize and communicate critical data for oil and gas, aerospace, construction, medical, and other industries prominent in Houston and the surrounding region. The company’s existing customers in the region include Bechtel, ExxonMobil, Lockheed, NASA, Shell, the Texas Advanced Computing Center, and University of Texas, Texas A&M and Rice University. Houston operations are currently being managed by Darin McKinnis, CEI’s vice president of marketing and sales. When hired, the business development manager for the Houston office will oversee existing CEI accounts and be responsible for generating new business in the region. Fulfilling critical needs “Our line of simulation products and services, forged through our own development and close partnerships, gives us solutions that are ideally focused for key industries in the Houston area,” says McKinnis. “Companies in the region are using our products in critical areas such as managing oil reservoirs, analyzing complex flow physics for the space shuttle, and driving virtual reality displays that enable engineers and scientists to see data in new and enlightening ways.” Among the Houston-area organizations that use CEI’s software is the NASA Johnson Space Center. NASA Johnson uses CEI’s EnSight software to visually simulate complex solid-fluid interaction within real-life mission scenarios for the space shuttle and the Constellation Program. NASA’s Constellation Program is developing the next generation of spacecraft designed to return humans to the moon by the end of next decade, paving the way for eventual journeys to Mars and beyond. Partnerships add value In addition to its own line of visualization products, CEI sells and supports Harpoon, a product from Sharc Ltd. (Manchester, UK) that automates mesh generation for computational fluid dynamics; and two products from ESSS of Brazil: Kraken for manipulating and visualizing oil and gas reservoir data, and CHIMERA for image analysis of materials such as porous rock and metallic microstructures. The partnership with ESSS is especially important for the oil and gas industry. ESSS has provided major technological breakthroughs for Petrobras, one of the largest oil companies in the world. ESSS is also part of a consortium researching methods for controlling and eliminating microbial souring of oil, an issue central to preserving and maximizing oil reserves.